Imagine being in the soul of such a concentration camp inmate. He has been behind the electric wires for several years. For several years he has been battling hunger and longing for home, living off unverified news. He kept reaching for something, but something always interrupted him, even a year ago with the last German offensive in Belgium and Luxembourg. But once it was indeed true. One morning they came and said that the SS men were gone and a white flag was flying at the gate. That was in the morning, and by evening, after several hours of nerve-wracking tension and various gunfire in the vicinity, the white flag was no longer flying at the gate, but rather the starry American flag, and our concentration camp inmate was truly free. He finally received it. Put yourself in his situation and you will understand what joy is.
Once we can wait for the Lord's coming as devotedly and fervently as that concentration camp inmate waited for the Americans, then our sharpened eyes will recognize that the Lord is indeed near, and a Pavlovian joy will overwhelm us and become a truly creative force in our lives, and we will become a creative force in the world.
(Adolf Kajpr SJ /1902–1959/;
autobiographical memory of the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp,
published shortly after the war in the weekly Neděle, December 16, 1945;
quoted from the book Presence is God's Own Time. Refugium 2021)
